"Fryderyk Chopin" 1991

"Johann Sebastian Bach" 1994

"Arthur Fiedler" 1995

"Louis "satchmo" Armstrong" 1996

"Dizzy Gillespie" 1996

"Rosemary Clooney" 2000

Hirschfeld On The Record

More Than 70 Years of Album Covers

“You got your idea of God from where most gay kids get it — the album cover of My Fair Lady. Original cast. It's got this Hirschfeld caricature of George Bernard Shaw up in the clouds, manipulating Rex Harrison and Julie Andrews on strings, like marionettes. It was your parents' album, you were little, you thought it was a picture of God. As, I believe, did Shaw.”

Jeffrey by Paul Rudnick, 1994

There are few place Hirschfeld’s work has not appeared. Rather than confine himself to galleries and museums, Hirschfeld crated art for everything from postage stamps to billboard. Album covers, from 78’s to compact disks, are a rich vein of Hirschfeld art. Hirschfeld recorded music like no LP, tape, or MP3 ever has. From Aerosmith to Pinchas Zuckerman, Hirschfeld has played with them all.

In the 1930s, record companies began to issue collections of records – literally bound albums of ten to twelve record sleeves — by a performer or a type of music. The covers were the first American album art, and not surprisingly, when Porgy and Bess was released on multi-78's, Hirschfeld was commissioned to draw the "album" cover.

By 1938, Columbia Records hired Alex Steinweiss as its art director and he made it a practice to have a cover designed for every release, replacing plain covers. Other companies followed his lead, and by the late 1940s, albums for all the major companies featured their own colorful paper covers in both 10-inch and 12-inch sizes. Some featured reproductions of classic art while others utilized original designs. As cast albums became more common, Hirschfeld’s art was often re-purposed for album releases. By the 1950s, when sales of LPs mushroomed, Hirschfeld was receiving regular commissions for original cover art.

Along with major label releases Hirschfeld did a series of cover for Walden Records in Fifties. Walden was devoted to recording lesser-known songs written by the major songwriters of American Popular Song in contemporary small-band jazz arrangements. Founder Edward Jablonski, who would become a biographer of many of the same composers, turned to Hirschfeld for iconic covers of Cole Porter, Rodgers & Hart, Harold Arlen, Ira Gershwin, Jerome Kern, and Arthur Schwartz. For Caedmon, Hirschfeld drew covers for spoken word releases such as Ogden Nash Reads (1953), and concept projects like MGM's Kaye Ballard‘s The Fanny Brice Story in Song (1958).

The Sixties saw covers for such diverse releases as Don Knotts’ An Evening With Me (1961) to the soundtrack cover of Dr. Doolittle (1967) to a cover for jazz harmonica player Toots Thielemans. He also began a long association with RCA, producing a string of covers for Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops on various themes. When these albums were reissued thirty years later, Hirschfeld was commissioned for a whole new series of images.

If Hirschfeld was not responsible for some of the classic rock album covers in the Sixties, in the Seventies, he created one of rock and roll’s most enduring album images for Aerosmith’s Draw the Line (1977). Hirschfeld visited the group while they were recording in Bearsville, New York. Band members liked the drawing so much, that Hirschfeld was commissioned to draw a duplicate of the first to avert a rift between two of the musicians who wanted the first work.

Herschel Bernardi’s Showstopper (1970) featured a tablecloth that Hirschfeld had sketched a likeness of the singer in and out of his costume in Fiddler On The Roof. There were also iconic images of violinists Jascha Heifetz (1971) and Isaac Stern (1979). Trumpeter Donald Byrd’s Caricaturesalbum wisely featured a Hirschfeld of the musician at work.

In 1991, he began a ten-year relationship with BMG for a series of 85 covers of classical composers, jazz musicians and composers, Arthur Fiedler, and vocalists such as Rosemary Clooney, Lena Horne and Frank Sinatra.

Look for our new weekly feature in our News section of Hirschfeld album covers. As many as we have in our archive, no doubt, there are more out there. Check this site to see if we have an image of the album you have. If we don't have it, please feel free to send a snapshot of any Hirschfeld covers that you find to archive@alhirschfeldfoundation.org.